DayZ and Icarus team up with a cheeky 'The Day After' survival Steam sale bundle

(Image credit: Bohemia Interactive / RocketWerkz)

We weren't terribly surprised to see early access zombie survival game The Day Before crash and burn, but the speed with which it fell apart—a mere four days between the game's disastrous launch and developer Fntastic closing—was a bit of a shock.

I'm not a particular fan of grave-dancing about a failed game and a shuttered studio, but it's not hard to understand why the makers of another zombie survival game like DayZ—which The Day Before was so clearly trying to emulate—might feel some satisfaction upon seeing a copycat strike out at the plate.

After a pretty harsh tweet mocking the developer of The Day Before, Bohemia Interactive is now telling disappointed survival fans the same thing you might read on a pizza box. "You've tried the rest, now try the best." DayZ is on sale, in other words.

And it's not alone: the sale includes survival game Icarus from developer RocketWerkz—the studio founded by original DayZ creator Dean Hall. The two studios have bundled their survival games together for what they call "The Day After Survival Sale Bundle." Get it? Purchased together, both games are 33% off Steam until December 21.

"This limited-time offer represents a unique partnership between the publishers of DayZ and Icarus," the Steam sale page says. "It provides players with a chance to experience the stark contrasts of survival—from the relentless threats of a zombie-infested landscape to the unexplored dangers of an extraterrestrial planet."

DayZ, which kicked off the early access survival game craze a decade ago, has been persistently climbing the ladder of the most-played Steam games, currently within the top 20. Icarus hasn't had that level of success but its not for a lack of trying—there have been updates that add new missions, modes, maps, mounts, and more every single week for the past two years.

A person sitting on a giant bird near a wood cabin with other large birds nearby — Me riding my tamed giant bird while other giant birds hang around my house in Icarus (Image credit: RocketWerkz)

I've haven't played DayZ in quite a while, but I have been playing Icarus again recently in open world mode, where I've built a cabin and tamed some giant birds, one of which I ride around. That's really all it takes to make me happy. So, if you're looking for an excuse to try out DayZ or Icarus, especially if you got burned for giving The Day Before a chance, this is a good time to do it.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.